


Let's Have Dinner

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Love, Romance, learning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-17 00:28:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9296240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: Sherlock is becoming more human. I doubt that Moffat and Gatiss, with their preference for remaining as much within canon as they are able, would go all the way to real, lasting, marriage-style romance for Sherlock. They didn't even manage it for John, exactly...though I am adoring Mary as the ghost in their shared machine. But what they are doing leads me to believe in a Sherlock who would, someday, love, and even marry. It's one of the differences between Victorian Sherlock and modern Sherlock. Victorian Sherlock could live a life among men, and no one, even those morally fierce about the benefits of marriage, would be all that surprised or suspicious. Modern Sherlock, though, has been forced into proximity to women in ways that have reeducated him more than a little. And now he's got Mary embedded in his mind, providing commentary and laughing at him affectionately. So...





	

"Oh, oh, she's calling you back! Answer!"

  
"You're not here. There is no reason for me to give in to your base sense of humor."

  
"I am so here--right in the middle of your Mind Palace, where I can hear your text alert. Answer. You know you want to."

  
"I don't."

  
(Rude noise) "Fibbing, Sherlock."

  
"Why?"

  
"Because it will complete you as a human being."

  
"John said that. What do you think?"

  
"I think you're lonely, love...answer her."

  
"I'm not lonely."

  
"Where have you heard that before?"

Sherlock snatched the phone from his pocket, scowling, trying to pretend he was not responding to the ever-near ghost of Mary Watson. He glanced down.

**Let's have dinner.**

**I'm bored--let's have dinner soon.**

Reluctantly, longingly, he typed on his screen.

**I'm not hungry. SH**

**Good! Definitely let's have dinner!**

He shivered, in spite of the warmth of his dressing gown. He touched his face, feeling the bristles and stubble. He looked at himself.

**I wouldn't make good company. SH**

**So I've heard. Let's have dinner anyway. You can eat in my hotel room.**

**In High Wycombe? SH**

**What?**

**Nothing. Something John said. Silly, as always. Where are you staying? SH**

**The Lanesborough.**

He fell silent, imagining the effort of showering, shaving, combing his hair, cleaning off the few remaining scars left from recent adventures. So much solved, so little resolved. 

"Go," said Mary, laughing. "Go on--get up, wash off, dress in those wicked trousers you like that show your bum off. Go on..."

"And the hat?" His mental voice was wry.

"Sure," Mary chortled. "Make her laugh. Always an aphrodisiac, I promise."

He glared at what proved to be empty space and the light shining off furniture. Still, her voice whispered, "Go..." 

He stood, then, hands already reaching for the sash of the robe. Even so he growled, "It won't make me a complete human being, you know. Not that it even means anything."

He heard her laughing even over the shower...

 

Later that night, lying in Irene's bed, he thought, "Well. That was good. As good as it was in Karachi. But..."

Beside him Irene stirred, mumbled, and rolled over, stretching her body langorously and nudging the pillow into place beneath her ear. He smiled--ironic, affectionate, uneasy. He stroked a free strand of hair off her face and behind her ear, and tried not to look too satisfied when she woke. Still...

"Why does John think giving in to my sexual impulses will make me a complete human?"

She blinked, frowned, then shook her head. "Because he's an idiot?"

"It's not like his own relationships satisfied him, or left him happy."

"He didn't say it would make you happy, Sherlock. Or satisfy you," Mary said, suddenly sitting on the far side of Irene's bed. She took the opportunity to evaluate the mad, crazy one. "Not bad, for the record. A bit serpentine. But, hey--whatever appeals..."

"Go away," he mentally spat at her.

"Where?" Her laughter was perpetual.

"Hell," he thought. "My mind palace."

She pouted, all camp amusement. "Not until you improve the decor. That place is positively gothic. You do know you've got a man in chains in a padded room down there, don't you?"

"Go..."

"All right, let me do the decorating..."

"Whatever you like," he thought, flapping his hands mentally. "Just go..." And found Irene looking up at him, bemused.

"I was...thinking," he said, uneasily.

"Mmmm? Something about John's illusions about romance?"

He made a face. "Well. He didn't promise me happiness, I suppose. Or even satisfaction. Just completeness. Which leaves out if I'm going to be completed by an entire mess of agony I was smarter to avoid."

She ran a slim hand up his forearm. "Do I make you so unhappy?" she purred, drawing herself up while pulling him down. 

His mind went blurry, as it so often did when Irene came into his life. "I...uh. No..."

"Maybe I should work on that," she said, and drew out a pair of satin-covered handcuffs. She grinned. "You can always tell John you're widening your human experience."

He didn't argue. He closed his eyes, and waited for more.

He got more, of course, and in the end wondered why more was never enough.

"Keep asking, sweetie," Mary murmured in his ear. She kissed his temple, and was gone.

 

"Love," Sherlock announced dismissively, as he tossed a burnt clinker of a chip out of the chip basket, "is a highly overrated activity. Regardless of what John Watson says."

"How would you know," Molly grumbled, as she prodded a large slab of haddock, releasing the steam from the batter. "It's not like you...." She paused, then, eyes widening. "When? Who?"

He didn't look at her, but shrugged in the comforting shelter of his coat. "Sometimes. Now and then. Someone you...don't know."

Her eyes narrowed. "That Adler woman?"

He didn't answer--and put up with a sharp slap to his upper arm. "Sherlock, she's a...a..."

"A successful businesswoman?" 

Another slap on the shoulder. Why were all his friends so violent?

"You might ask why so many people want to hit you--you'll get a more informative answer."

"Go away, Mary," he thought, scowling. Then, out loud, he said, "She's beautiful, brilliant, and she finds me attractive."

Molly got a "which one don't I provide" look on her face, part anger, part hurt feelings. "Whatever. I won't beat you up with a riding crop."

He gave her a side-eyed look...and then checked his shoulder. "No. Nor would I trust you not to leave more bruises if you did."

She huffed, and grumbled, "I don't know why I like you."

"I don't, either," he confessed. "I'm rude, sullen, inconsiderate, I...used to do drugs. I'm quite insensitive. John assures me you should have dropped me long ago."

Her eyes softened--her mouth softened. She picked at her haddock, and said, softly, "Because I will always love you."

He hunched down in the coat, breaking off bits of the sea bream in his own order. "But I'm bad for you."

"Yes, you are," she said, setting her chin and forcing herself to eat her meal. "But," she added after awhile, "you're also my friend. So I love you, and am careful."

And that, Sherlock thought wearily, was a hell of a way for either of them to live.

"I love you, too," he said, softly. "But I will never be good for you."

She nodded. "I know, Sherlock. Believe me, I know."

Mary didn't say anything. Sherlock found she seldom did around Molly, as though she were sufficiently in agreement with the little pathologist to have no need to contradict or even revise. 

The fish and chips were good. They finished slowly, and put their gloves back on. Sherlock walked Molly back to St. Barts, one arm over her shoulders, wishing that things were different than they were.

She smiled as she went into the building, and waved.

He waved back. 

"That's right, wave," Mary said, standing at his elbow. "Wave and smile. You never know when your last chance will be gone."

"She's not right for me," he said.

"Doesn't stop you from loving her."

"All this becoming more completely human garbage hurts," he said.

She said, softly, "Ask the Velveteen Rabbit."

He could not understand what she said. It had to be something he knew--it was his mind palace she drew from, after all. But if so, it was something he'd deleted once, and lost his way back to. 

**Let's have dinner. SH**

**Not hungry.**

**Good! Let's have dinner. SH**

**Having dinner with someone else.**

**Client? SH**

The wait was too long. Sherlock felt something inside. He wasn't sure what. It was like the moment when you knew the high had ended, and wasn't coming back.

**No.**

**Ah. Have a good dinner, then. SH**

**I will.**

He wanted to ask if she'd call again. If they'd have dinner again. He didn't. He knew they would. It was just that he'd never again do so without knowing he wasn't her only--and probably was not, in the end, her best.

How odd, he thought. I've known her for years, and known all the time she was a lesbian and a dominatrix, and it never occurred to me to ask whether there were others she loved, too.

Mary said nothing, but he could feel her wry, amused gaze, and feel her laughing sympathy.

He really was a bit of an idiot, he thought, and smiled, and spent the night watching perfectly ordinary porn.

 

He was walking past a bookstore when her face caught his eye, and her name registered. 

Janine.

He smiled tightly. Famous, now. New best-seller: racy, scandalous, funny. Chick-lit even men read. 

Chick-lit he read, though he didn't let even John know. If John knew he'd start making more comments about a Harvester in High Wycombe and completeness and things like that. But he did read them. Sometimes he scoffed, and often he argued about the utter implausibility of her plots, and the overblown emotions billowing all over her books. But, sometimes, a turn of phrase, a written caress, would remind him of her, and he'd go take a long bath and....remember. Ideally he'd remember quite graphically.

"You loved her," Mary said, walking down the pavement beside him.

"Don't be ridiculous. I used her and lied about it."

"And you're lying again."

He'd long since given up on trying to convince Mary--his inner, mental Mary, the ghost who made his heart break far too often--that he wasn't lying when she nailed him. Somehow she'd compounded Mary's easy authority with the additional certainty that came of being his very own companionate ghost, in residence in all the shadowy, sad places, yet somehow lighting them with her joy and humor.

Again she said, "You loved her."

"And?"

"And now you do something about it."

"It didn't work with Irene. Or with Molly."

"No."

"It didn't make me happy. Or satisfied."

"No. But it made you more completely human, Sherlock."

"Did not."

"Fibbing."

"What makes you think I am more human now?"

"Because, love, you bothered to notice that she's coming for a signing next weekend. And you're going to be there for it. Hat and all, and to hell with the paparazzis."

He couldn't argue. Without allowing himself to pay attention, he'd memorized the time and day, rearranged his own schedule, and settled on an outfit he could wear with the hat. And chosen which book to bring to be signed. He thought the one with the especially repulsive villain she'd laughingly modeled on him. 

He smiled.

Mary laughed.

"See," she whispered. "More completely human every day."

 

Janine looked up and saw him--coat, hat, and copy of "The Lying Bastard." 

"Hello, you," she said.

He smiled. "Hello, you," he said, and handed her the book.

Twenty years later they still argued about why they were still together. But the truth was, Sherlock knew--he looked in her eyes and saw someone who saw not only the man he really was, just as Mary, Molly, and Irene did, but also saw the man he could dream to become. 

That night, when the line was finally gone and the paparazzi departed, she said, "What next, Shay-Shay?"

"Dinner" he said. "I know a Harvester in High Wycombe with a nice little room we can rent after."

"Bugger that," she said. "How about we pick something up at the Thai Palace and then go on over to Baker Street?"

"Take her up on it," Mary said, laughing her arse off in his inner palace.

So he did.

 


End file.
